My son is sick. Nothing bad, according to the doctor, a simple viral infection. But it’s his first illness, and he’s only 6 months old…

How do you explain to a baby who’s nose is plugged, who has trouble feeding because it’s hard to breathe at the same time, who keeps coughing and who obviously feels like crap, that you understand, that you really wish you could do something to help him feel better, but that there’s just nothing you can do! You can’t explain that, of course. That’s what’s terrible with sickness in young children. I can’t even imagine what it must be when it’s a real illness instead of simple sniffles.

In our case, it all started Monday night. Elliot went to bed moaning and woke up with a fever and a cough. We gave him Tylenol and the fever subsided, but the cough sounded pretty bad to us. We managed to see a doctor Tuesday afternoon. Of course, he didn’t have a fever anymore and he never coughed in front of the doctor (there must be something weird in the air of medical clinic that instantly relieves all simptoms of respiratory infections), so we were nicely told that it was nothing, to go home and give him lots of fluids. So we did, and put him to bed hoping he would sleep, since we hadn’t had a very good night the night before. Zak and I were so exhausted that we went to bed at 7, right after our baby.

Elliot slept pretty well until 2:30, at which point I fed him, then he coughed and threw up all the recently ingested milk over me, my pajamas, my hair, the rocking chair, his pajamas… I changed him, fetched the nose pump to try and clear his nose so he could drink more easily (I know, not a very nice image to put into your mind… sorry), found out he had also puked all over his bed at some point of the night, then fed him again. This time he kept it in, which is good because my main concern at that point was dehydration. Very bad and quick to happen in babies! I managed to put him back to bed at 3:30 and he slept until 6:45, so we all caught up on our sleep.

This morning Elliot still has a plugged nose and a cough, but he kept his milk again. Hopefully I’ll be able to get him to sleep a lot today to help fight the baddies. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll even manage to make a dent in the accumulated pile of dishes… You never know!

This entry was posted
on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 10:05 am and is filed under Family life.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.